


And The Horse You Rode In On

by BetteNoire (WeAreWolves)



Series: A Hatemance For The Ages [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: All The Sex Is An Extremely Bad Idea, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Sass, Bucky Barnes Is Not Here For Your Bullshit, Cap!Steve/modern!Bucky, Dubious Consent, Enemes to.... still enemies, Enemies to Lovers, Especially If Your Name Is Steve Goddamn Rogers, Hate at First Sight, Hatemance, M/M, Meet-Ugly, Nobody Behaves Well, Shrunkyclunks, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Unhealthy Relationships, Yes somehow this is also a coffeeshop AU, alternating pov, hatefucking, kids don’t try this at home, non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:42:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreWolves/pseuds/BetteNoire
Summary: Bucky hadn’t really planned to curse out Captain America and he certainly hadn’t planned what was next other than “be unemployed”, but apparently what came next was Steve leaping out of his seat, fisting his hands in Bucky’s shirt and shoving Bucky against the floor-to-ceiling window.~ A hatemance in two chapters ~





	1. It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Hate-Mas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for noncon, see notes for details

Steve slouches on his sofa, in nothing but his boxers, shifting uncomfortably as his body repairs itself after their Central American mission on Friday. He’s caught between going stir crazy in his apartment, and not wanting to deal with the outside world in any way, shape or form. And he’s _starving_.

In the background he’d thrown on some insipid Hallmark Christmas movie about a girl with cancer who gets snowed in at a hotel in Vermont over Christmas and surprise, meets her Soulmate. He glares at the screen as the couple say their Words to each other, at the schmaltzy special effects where her Words, winding around her wrist, turn from blue to gold… and Steve rolls his eyes, grabs the remote, and flicks the TV off.

He knows how these things end in the movies. Her cancer will go into remission because of the Miracle of Love, and they’ll buy the hotel.

He also knows things will never end like that for him. He’s never had Words. It wasn’t unheard of. Usually people whose Soulmates’ Words never appear were those meant to die young, either from illness or accident. People like Steve.

But then science intervened, and Steve didn’t die. And then he did die, but it didn’t take. And his body, small and wretched or big and perfect, remained a blank canvas throughout. No Words. No Soulmate.

Well, his body was currently an Expressionist masterpiece of purple, brown and yellow bruises, and the angry red of curing wounds, thanks to a mad scientist and his army of giant mutant crabs in El Salvador. But all that would be gone soon enough.

Food would help. Steve’s stomach rumbles again. He needs sugar. He heals faster the more calories he packs in.

“Sir, would you like me to postpone your noon meeting with PR?” Jarvis asks.

“Ugh. What time is it now? What’s the meeting about?” Steve groans.

“It’s currently 9am, Captain Rogers, and the PR meeting is to do your weekly answers to fan letters and emails and tweets.”

Steve sits up. Something in his ribs twinges. He doesn’t feel up to two hours of dealing with weirdos proposing marriage to him via email and making comments about his body, or insinuations about why he’s still single.

It wasn’t publicly known that he has no Words. But there had been a lot of speculation in the media about his status, whether he had Words and if they were of someone from his own time, or someone from this time. Women on talk shows gave him pitying looks. He hated it. He hated the right everyone thought they had to his personal life.

“I’ll let you know in an hour, Jarvis,” he says, getting up and pulling on a sweater and jeans over his boxers. First, he’s going down to the 24-hour coffee shop on the public floor of Stark Tower and getting one of their 1,000-calorie giant caffeinated sugar drinks. Then he’ll decide about PR.

He blinks as the elevator opens. There are Christmas carols playing, and tinsel hanging everywhere in gaudy red and gold. He swears it hadn’t been there yesterday, and then remembers he’s been in his apartment for three days straight. It’s Monday now, and Thanksgiving had been Thursday, and now apparently it was Christmas.

He should get presents for the team, he thinks, as he shambles towards the coffee shop. Not like he has any other family. But it feels like a duty, something false, performative.

The coffee shop is usually pretty quiet at this hour. The initial pre-work rush is gone, and it’s not yet time for people to be taking 10am breaks. And there’s a new barista. Baristo? Whatever. Coffee guy.

New Coffee Guy is a slim, tall brunet, who looks… _familiar_ , somehow. Aristocratic face, hidden under shaggy hair and stubble and a generally slovenly appearance. Strange, pale eyes, direct gaze. And, incongruously, a Santa hat.

Steve feels a funny lurch of recognition. Where has he seen the guy before?

The guy’s staring at him, but he’s Captain America, and everyone stares at him. Still, Steve’s whole body aches, and he’s not in a mood for it today, and he wishes the guy would stop looking at him like he was some sort of tourist attraction. That just for once he could get a damn cup of coffee without owing everyone An Appearance.

“Wow, you’re… even better in real life,” he sees the guy whisper.

The skin over his hip twinges weirdly then, a sharp, burning pain. It’s a reminder of how his body is still knitting together, how much he needs calories. And does _not_ need a gormless Christmas temp staffer who looks like he’s working up to asking for a selfie. He’s going to have to have a word with Tony or Pepper, because they were usually really specific about the staff for that shop, only hiring people who could cope with Avengers dropping by. He knew the social media NDA for any job in Stark Tower was about 50 pages long, but maybe Shaggy over there didn’t read it.

“W-what can I get you?” The barista says. His nametag says Bucky. What the hell kind of dumb name is Bucky? Steve will never understand modern names.

Then he realises where he’s seen the barista before. New Coffee Guy looks just like one of his favourite paintings. Steve points at him and smiles, pleased with himself. “You look just like that Bronzino, at the Met.”

The guy gasps, and his hand goes to his left bicep.

It’s a good performance, but Steve doesn’t buy it. “Those are my Words, look!” The guy tries to push up the left sleeve of his henley, but can’t get it over his elbow. He swears to himself as he tries to figure out if he can divest himself of apron, flannel and henley, and realises he can’t. Then he looks Steve in the eye again. “W-we’re Soulmates. Those were my Words.”

Steve rubs the bridge of his nose. All he’d wanted was a damn latte. “No, we’re not.”

“I’m not lying,” the guy says, as he tries to pull the neck of his henley down. His Santa hat falls off.

This is getting embarrassing, Steve thinks. Someone is taking pictures, he can hear the metallic _klik-klik-klik_ of an iPhone shutter. He has to end this _now_.

“You gotta trust me, they’re right here, around my bicep—“ the guy says.

Steve uses his Captain America voice as he glares at the kid. “You’re lying. I know that because I don’t have a Soulmate. _I don’t have Words_.”

Then he turns on his heel and leaves.

When he gets to the elevator he realises he never even got his coffee. He growls in frustration as Jarvis whisks him back up to his apartment.

 

* * *

Bucky’s day never really gets off to a great start — after all, he’s 30, living in his parents’ basement apartment in Brooklyn because he can’t afford his own place, and making $13 an hour doing temp work at a Stark Tower coffeeshop because his brain is too weird to let him hold down a real job (thanks, Army!). But that Monday was a 3/10 in the pain scale that was his life.

(He can picture his therapist frowning at him and asking if he’s _sure_ it wasn’t higher. Okay. Fine. 5/10.)

And then HE shows up.

Bucky knew he might run into Avengers — he’d even seen them from a distance on ops (he was a sniper, he saw everything from a distance) but he’d always been very blah about celebrity. So he assumed it wouldn’t matter when he eventually ran into one up close.

But suddenly there was Steve Rogers striding purposefully towards him, big and gorgeous and somehow hotter than ever with a cut cheek and a healing black eye. Ugh, what did it say about him that he found the idea of roughed-up Captain America unaccountably hot. Bucky knew his brain was Bad in all sorts of ways, but really, brain? _Really?!_

Also, his body could get fucked too, because along with his DD214, he got depression, headaches, insomnia, and a fistful of daily pills to manage all of it. He thought between his shitty brain chemistry and the side-effects of the pills that he’d kissed his libido bye but no. Apparently his libido had just decided to take a nap until Cap showed up.

He was going to enjoy it, because good things like this didn’t happen to him, Bucky Barnes, 30-year-old barely-employed failure who was only good at shooting people.

And then Steve had said his Words.

Bucky couldn’t even remember what he’d said to Steve first. His mind had just gone blank. So he didn’t know what Steve’s Words should be, what the first thing he said to Steve was.

But good things didn’t happen to Bucky Barnes, part-time barista and full-time loser.

Bucky thinks, sure, maybe it had been some sort of mistake. Someone else would say the same words. He had a gal in his platoon whose Words were _hiya, cutie_ , and someone new said _that_ to her about once a day.

But Bucky had felt the Words burning when Steve spoke, and when he checked later in the break room they weren’t blue any more, but shining gold.

He sits there, googling _rejected Soulmate_  for way more than his allotted 5-minute break, tears coursing down his face. He falls into a Wikihole of stories of people whose Soulmates rejected them. How both sides of the rejected Soulbond tended to spiral into depression or suicide, or psychosis.

But in every case, they were Soulmates, they had each others’ Words. Not like this, Not one-sided. Steve didn’t have his Words.

Bucky was literally the biggest loser in the world, a cosmic fucking joke, the man so useless that fate or whatever hadn’t given his Words to _anyone_. After all, how could Steve Rogers, born in 1918, have his Words? Bucky wasn’t even born until 1988.

Bucky’s manager, Tina, comes in, and chews him out for both over-staying his break and being weird to the celebrities, but she cuts off mid-rant when he turns to face her and she sees his red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

He buries his face in his hands, ashamed of himself, wishing he could just die. “Literally, I was a black-ops sniper,” he sobs out through his hands. “I thought I’d be _fine_. I thought I could handle seeing them, I didn’t even think I’d recognise them, I’m so sorry, Tina, I don’t know what happened.”

That was a lie, but he wasn’t going to tell her about the fucking Words. That was his own private shame mountain.

Tina puts a hand on his shoulder. “Bucky, there’s something you should see.” She sits down next to him on the box of coffee grounds he was perched on, and pulls out her phone.

There’s a video up on youtube. Someone had videoed the whole confrontation with Steve. It sounds like a couple schoolgirls because there’s snorts and giggles and one of them chokes out “loserrr” at one point.

The video has half a million views. Apparently it was news that Captain America didn’t have Words, so that’s the big deal, that’s why the video was embedded on every gossip site in the US. Nobody cared about the poor deluded loser barista who thought he had Cap’s Words. He was just collateral damage in someone else’s shitshow.

Bucky silently hands Tina his apron and his badge and goes home, baseball cap pulled low over his face. He doesn’t leave his room for two days.

Tina calls Bucky on Wednesday, urging him to come back to work. Apparently the video doubled the store’s customer numbers.

 

* * *

Steve’s meeting with PR pivots from fan letters to that goddamn Youtube video of him and the Coffee Guy, and the whole world knowing that he doesn’t have Words.

Trudy from PR writes a press release for him as he sits at the 37th-floor conference table, hands balled into fists, and stares out at the East River.

He feels emptier than usual. It’s a cruel fucking joke to play on someone without Words, taunting them about having a Soulmate, and today was the worst possible day for that guy to do it. The rational part of Steve tries to say that the guy couldn’t have known about Steve’s lack of Words. That he probably just wanted a job or a fuck or attention, but Goddamn it, Steve felt so _lonely_ sometimes. And this is one of those sometimes.

And he feels cheated. He’d given his whole life to Captain America and it gave him a body that worked, but it was slowly destroying his soul. At this point he feels like all he’s doing is just surviving, his life nothing but empty nights and takeaway and waiting around for another deployment.

He lies up in his room until Wednesday, existing on delivery until his body is healed fully and he feels restless. Natasha, who’s a mind-reader about things like that, materialises in front of his door in the early afternoon and suggests they go down for a coffee and a walk.

But as she gets out of the elevator and turns towards their usual coffee place, Steve catches her elbow.

“I can’t go there right now,” Steve says. “There was something on Monday. One of the staff is…” He sighs. “A fan. Of the more _weird_ variety. And it ended up getting videoed.”

“Ohhh,” Natasha says. Steve doesn’t believe for a minute that she hasn’t seen the video, doesn’t know exactly what happened. “So that’s been why it’s been so crowded recently. People think they’ll see _celebrities_.” She peeks around the corner. “It’s pretty empty right now, though.”

Steve stares at his feet.

Natasha steps in and, quickly, unexpectedly, gives him a hug. It lasts about two seconds, but Natasha’s not a hugger. She drops her voice. “Steve, I never said anything, but I knew. I’m sorry.”

Steve can’t help but smile at her. “Thank you for not saying that everything will be okay.”

Natasha snorts. “Americans and their okay and their optimism. I’m Russian. We’re pessimists. We know everything is shit, which is why we’re delighted when very occasionally, it’s not.” She slips her little arm in his big one. “Come along,” she says, putting on a cartoonishly thick Russian accent. “I am deadly Red Room assassin. I protect you from stalker boy.”

“My hero,” Steve says.

* * *

Bucky’s arm throbs and he looks up from the espresso machine in time to see Steve Rogers and the Black Widow strolling into the shop. He yelps, spills hot coffee on his hand, and escapes into the back room.

Tina marches in ten seconds later, grabs him by the scruff of his shirt, and propels him towards the door. “You _will_ take him his order, and you _will_ apologise,” Tina says.

Bucky nods.

He takes the two huge, sugary lattes, with _Natasha_ and _Steve_ written on them in Tina’s nice script, over to the window table where the two Avengers have sat down. His hands are shaking, and the cups rattle as he puts them on the table. He had the steadiest hands in his regiment, once.

Black Widow glares at him. Steve glances up and his face falls, like he’s just found a squished cockroach on the bottom of his shoe.

Bucky glances down at himself, his threadbare jeans and worn-out adidas sambas. He knows he’s kind of let himself go and feels bad about his uncut hair and showing up to work yet again in a holey old thermal topped by his Sadness Flannel. “I-I’m sorry about Monday,” he stutters out.

“I hope you know now why it was a nasty trick,” Steve says. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson for when you meet your _real_ Soulmate, since you’re probably lucky enough to have one. Deceit is no foundation for a relationship.”

Bucky feels almost physically sick. Who does this douchebag thinks he is, on his fucking high horse? And then his hands stop shaking, and go very still. “You know what? For a brief moment on Monday I was really fucking thrilled I had Captain America’s Words on my fucking arm. But fuck you, Steve, I’m glad you don’t have my Words in return, because then every time you looked in the mirror it would remind you what a complete shitstain of a human being you are for publicly rejecting and humiliating your Soulmate. _I hope you die alone_.”

Bucky hadn’t really planned to curse out Captain America and he certainly hadn’t planned what was next other than “be unemployed”, but apparently what came next was Steve leaping out of his seat, fisting his hands in Bucky’s shirt and shoving Bucky against the floor-to-ceiling window.

His shoulder blades and head bang against the solid glass and he starts to get hard, because his body hates him and wants him to die of embarrassment.

And then Steve shoves his big perfect face in Bucky’s, hissing at him. Bucky tunes back in when Steve is saying something about him having _no idea how awful it is to go through life knowing that you’ll never have a Soulmate--_

Bucky growls back, “Well, it looks like I’m going to find out.” Then he knees Captain America in the balls.

He’s not proud.

Well, maybe he’s a little bit proud.

He nails the dismount, too, storming out with well-timed hair flip as Steve clutches his midsection. He gives the Black Widow a wide berth, because he’s not stupid, but she just smiles at him, sharp and calculating.

 

* * *

 

Steve spends the next 24 hours in a steady burn of fury, alternating between being angry at that damn barista’s comeback to him, and being angry that a fucking barista managed to get the drop on him.

He decides to go downstairs again, just to see the guy from a distance, and try to figure out how Captain America got sucker-punched by a food service employee.

But “Bucky” (stupid goddamn name, really) isn’t there.

He waits a couple minutes, in case the guy is in back. Probably getting high or stealing things, by the look of him.

Then the petite manager with the blue streak in her hair bustles out, Steve’s usual order clutched in her hands and a big smile pasted on her face. There’s a foam-art shield in the top of the latte, with coloured sugar sprinkles and everything.

It annoys him, the obsequiousness.

And then he feels bad for being annoyed. This whole fake-soulmate fiasco has been bothering him more than he wants to admit.

The coffee-shop manager apologises on Bucky’s behalf, saying how sorry they all were, and please allow Bucky some leeway, how he’s part of Mr Stark’s veterans outreach program, and he’s a good guy, just struggles sometimes.

Then she thrusts a bag of Snickerdoodle cookies at him. “But we moved him to night shift. You won’t see him any more during your usual coffee runs.”

“Thanks,” Steve says.

 

* * *

 

Thursday is lost to depression. To lying on the floor staring at the ceiling wondering if anything will ever get any better, or it’ll just continue terrible forever. If it’s worth keeping going at all.

Bucky knows he has to keep his job, though, so he sets four separate alarms scattered through his tiny apartment and they finally annoy Bucky enough that he gets off the floor and goes in to his first night shift.

His depression doesn’t get better. He thought it was bad before but now it’s like he’s missing something, this vast well of emptiness inside him, a space that’s been cleared for his Soulmate but is now just… hollow. Full of nothing.

Night shift doesn’t help. The coffee shop runs 24 hours, and he’s on from 10pm-7am.

At least during the day it’s too busy to think.

Night, there’s lots and lots of time to think. So much time. And so many fun places for his brain to spiral down to.

 

* * *

Agent Coulson comes in to give an early briefing on Friday on new developments at Hydra, and they all roll in sleepily at 7am. Steve’s hoping for two things: that someone has called down for coffee, and that this briefing means SHIELD will deploy them against Hydra soon. Steve is _dying_ to do a mission. He’s so restless, all keyed up with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Then coffee arrives, and with it, Bucky Goddamn Barnes.

He goes around the table, putting everyone’s order down in front of them. And he’s wearing short sleeves today, a t-shirt advertising a Modest Mouse, whatever that is.

Steve can see the Words, shining gold around Bucky’s left bicep, _You look just like that Bronzino in the Met_ , in Steve’s own cursive handwriting. Writing that, of course, can be found in dozens of examples on the internet and in history textbooks.

Bucky doesn’t say anything to Steve, but he makes sure to put down Steve’s cup last, and with his left hand, putting those gold Words inches from Steve’s face.

“Nice tattoo,” Steve hisses, angry at the provocation. “Where’d you get it done?”

Bucky looks at him and smiles a perfect, insincere smile. “In Hell, obviously.”

Then Bucky walks out.

A moment later, Clint barks with laughter across the table, pointing at Steve. “Oh, man!” 

“What?” Steve says.

“Your cup!” Clint chortles.

Steve turns his cup around. In big sharpie letters, it says _CAPTAIN ASSHOLE_.

Steve is kept from storming out and giving the guy a piece of his mind by the fact that there are other people in the room, and Coulson is already beginning the briefing.

Natasha corners him afterwards. “Ever thought he might actually be your soulmate?” She says.

Steve gives her a look like she’s insane.

She smiles at him and pats his arm, suddenly bubbly, bouncing on her toes like a teenage girl. “Hey, Steve, let’s get tattoos,” she chirps.

“No point,” Steve says. “The Serum just expels the ink within 24 hours.”

Natasha steps into his path and levels a Significant Look at him.

Steve rolls his eyes in frustration. “Natasha, you know the Words are _different_. If you get injured across the Words, they heal and reappear over the scar. If your Words are on your arm and you lose your arm, they reappear somewhere else.”

“I’m just saying,” Natasha says. “What if your Words can’t appear because of the serum? Maybe think about that.”

Steve sighs. “Natasha, I felt nothing when I met him. _Nothing_.”

“I felt nothing when I met Clint,” Natasha counters. “Of course, _put down your gun_ is something people say to me a lot. I only knew from when I felt the Words burning, turning to gold.”

Clint strolls by, bumping Natasha’s shoulder as he passes. “I thought my Words were Greek. Didn’t expect to feel them turning when some ex-Soviet spy is yelling death threats at me.”

“His words say _When you’re finished breathing_ in Russian,” Natasha says. “Look, Steve, hearing your Words… it’s not birds singing, sunbeams breaking through clouds for everyone, and if your body can’t form the Words… if you don’t feel them burning in, you may not actually know.”

Steve folds his arms. “I _do_ know, Natasha. That barista is not my Soulmate.”

“He’s made you happier than you’ve been in a long time,” Natasha counters.

Steve has to restrain himself from burying his fist in the drywall. He takes abortive, angry steps, fisting his hands by his thighs. “I am _not_ happy. I am furious!”

Natasha grins. “Steve, you are delighted. You have something insurmountable to fight. And that thing is six feet tall and hot.”

“He’s NOT hot,” Steve roars. “He’s scruffy! He needs a damn haircut, and a shave, and clothes without holes in them!”

“Mm-hmm,” Natasha hums.

Later that night, Steve slides onto the sofa next to Natasha in the common room. “I asked Howard about my Words, you know. Just before the Valkyrie.”

Natasha sits up, her eyes wide with surprise.

Steve waves at her. “Relax. It’s not a big deal. None of that is any more. They’re all dead. But it was when I thought the war would end and I could go home. After I’d met Peggy, and she didn’t have my Words… that’s when I really started wondering if I would ever have a soulmate. Because that was it for me. I thought that maybe the Serum had impeded my ability to form my Soulmate’s words, and I was so sure it was Peggy, and then… she had someone else’s Words on her. So I asked Howard if I was broken, basically. If that was the price of being Captain America.”

“What did he say?” Natasha asks.

Steve shakes his head. “He was looking into it. Was running some tests, consulting some people. But I crashed the plane, and then he died…”

Natasha pulls out her phone. “You know Tony has all his dad’s files? Maybe Howard _did_ answer you. Can I text Tony?”

Steve nods.

Natasha has a long text conversation on her phone with Tony, and then finally she looks up, her green eyes merry. ”He’s going to look. And meanwhile, I got you a present!”

The elevator dings, and Bucky Fucking Barnes comes out with two coffees and a bag of croissants.

Steve wants to see his Words again, but Bucky’s in long sleeves, an old navy hoodie under his apron. He has circles under his eyes — he looks terrible, actually, Steve thinks. And he whole-body flinches when he sees Steve, barely keeping hold of the cardboard tray of coffees. When he puts them down on the coffee table in front of them, Steve can smell sweat and musk.

Steve realises he’s gripping the sofa arm so hard it’s creaking.

“Here’s your order,” Bucky mumbles, tucking a lock of greasy hair behind his ear.

Natasha salutes him. “Thanks, hope you didn’t spit in mine.”

Bucky turns and shuffles towards the elevator. “Nope,” he says. “Only his.”

Steve jumps up, rage burning within him, and hurdles the coffee table.

Bucky must realise he’s in deep shit now because he puts on a surprising burst of speed, bolting for the elevator. He’s furiously jabbing the Close Door button as Steve rounds the corner and calls out, “Jarvis!”

The doors stop closing.

Steve sees the moment Bucky’s face drops as he realises he isn’t getting out of this one. It’s an absolute delight for Steve to slam Bucky into the elevator wall. Steve presses his body against Bucky’s back, keeping him in place. There’s no way Bucky can escape _this_ with a cheap shot.

Steve calls to Jarvis to shut the door and hold the elevator in place and then Steve leans into Bucky, trying to hurt him a little as he presses Bucky’s whole front agaiinst the wall, and Bucky is surprisingly lean and wiry under his baggy clothes and he’s tense, and Steve hisses into his ear, wants to _bite_  his ear, maybe some pain would teach him a lesson, but instead he just says “I don’t care if you _are_ on one of Tony’s special charity programs. Find another job or drop this attitude.”

He shoves harder into Bucky, because it feels good, no, it feels _great_ to finally get some of his frustration out and fight back at this stupid asshole who’s been tormenting him. “I want you to know I felt absolutely nothing when I met you.”

Bucky shoves back against him and Steve grips him harder and then he realises Bucky isn’t shoving, he’s _grinding_ , and Bucky says, “Yeah, well I’m feeling something now, pal. It’s about five inches long and pressed against my ass.”

Steve burns with shame and fury as he realises how his body is reacting, and Bucky, the little shit, is _giggling_. “It’s eight inches,” he growls.

Bucky laughs at him, loud and bright in the small space. “Man, you just gotta accept the Serum didn’t make everything bigger. Or did you start off _real_ small?”

Steve has never wanted to shut someone up more in his entire life. Even Schmidt hadn’t made him this angry. Plus, Bucky’s long hair is tickling his face and it’s annoying the hell out of him.

Steve grabs that hair and yanks Bucky down, forcing him to his knees, and he gets out his cock and fuck, it _is_ hard, and Bucky’s about to say something but Steve forces his jaw open with his thumb and says “Shut up, just shut up,” and shoves his cock into Bucky’s mouth

And… Christ. _Finally_. Silence. Bucky gags a little, his breath hitching in a wet, surprised snuffle, and Steve thrusts, wanting to hear it again and _fuck_ , it’s so good, and he yanks Bucky’s hair again and there’s that little moan, and Steve says, “Is this what you want? Hm? Now you got it. Take it.”

And he’s fucking Bucky’s mouth, wet and sloppy, and spit and tears are coming down Bucky’s face and Bucky is glaring at him like he’s thinking up elaborate plans to kill Steve at some future date, but right now he’s sucking like an absolute champ and it doesn’t take Steve long to come undone, he doesn’t even warn Bucky because fuck him, he just comes half down Bucky’s throat and half all over his face, and then he wipes himself on Bucky’s hair and says “There, you got what you wanted, now leave me alone.”

Steve nods at the ceiling. Jarvis opens the doors and Steve is stepping backwards out them, wanting one last look at his victory, at Bucky, on his knees and speechless, for once.

But then Bucky, pouty lips red and fucked, eyes shining with wet fury, hisses, “No, you got what _you_ wanted, Captain,” and he reaches down and palms the bulge in his tatty old jeans. “I’m still waiting.”

“Tough luck,” Steve says, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW noncon: at the end of the chapter, Steve corners Bucky in an elevator and forces Bucky to give him a blowjob. If you want to skip that part, skip everything after “Steve has never wanted to shut someone up so badly in his entire life.”


	2. With Proper Carving, A Grudge Can Last Well Into The New Year

Jarvis takes pity on Bucky and takes him to an empty floor where he sneaks off to a bathroom and has a wank and then washes Captain Fucking America’s come off his face and hair.

His jaw hurts. So does his throat. Because yeah, Cap had about eight inches, but it was totally worth it to see how _furious_ he got when Bucky insulted his dick size.

The endorphin rush from whatever the hell they had done in the elevator — from being physically with his Soulmate — lasted for the rest of the day, which he mostly spends asleep in between bouts of waking up extremely horny and playing with himself.

But somewhere around 2am at work, the really dead time, Bucky crashes hard. The lonely ache is back, the feeling of being only half-complete. And Steve’s comment. “I felt nothing.” Bucky had felt the world tilt on its axis and re-arrange itself when Steve spoke the Words. For Bucky, it had been a full-on Disney bluebirds and forest animals coming out to sing hallelujah moment. There was no mistaking what it was. But Steve… Steve had looked at Bucky and felt _nothing_.

The cheery Christmas music playing quietly in the shop isn’t helping either. Everyone looks so fucking joyful, and he’s by himself, rejected by his Soulmate, a failure, busted down to night shift at a coffeeshop.

It’s amazing how you can be doing okay one minute, and then 30 minutes later be not doing fine at all. He starts having the bad “end it all” thoughts and has enough presence of mind to grab his emergency dose of antidepressants when Captain Asshole shows up.

He’s in soft, rust-coloured sweatpants and a tight t-shirt the same blue as his eyes. His hair is _perfect_. He could be in a catalogue, just like that. Modelling something.

Bucky looks like he slept in his clothes. (He had.) He doesn’t belong anywhere near Steve Rogers, and in his heart, he knows it.

Steve sighs, and shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks at the floor somewhere between himself and Bucky. “I wanted to apologise for yesterday evening,” he says. “I lost my temper and crossed a line.”

“Ya think?” Bucky says, propping his elbows on the counter and batting his eyelashes at Steve.

Steve presses his lips together, and glares at Bucky. “Look, this isn’t easy for me. None of this is,” he says.

Bucky can’t help but laugh.

“What?” Steve says. “What’s so funny to you about any of this?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and comes out from behind the counter. “You know, Steve. I can call you Steve? I’m so fucked up about this that I was about to go for my emergency meds so my brain would stop suggesting going up to the roof and stepping off it as a problem-solving device, and _you’re_ here because you have some light insomnia and guilt issues?” Bucky shakes his head. “Fuck ALL the way off. Apology not fucking accepted.”

Steve takes a step towards him, poking him in the chest with an index finger. “You can’t just crash-land into my life like this! I’m sorry you’re having problems, but—“

Bucky bats Steve’s hand away. “I’m your Soulmate, asshole! It’s what Soulmates do. Believe me, if I could find a way to not make you my Soulmate? I WOULD! I HATE YOU! You’ve been nothing but a complete, selfish ass since I’ve met you.”

“That is because _I am not your Soulmate_ ,” Steve snarls, grabbing Bucky’s wrist. “And even if I was, I would find some way to sever the bond because there is no way I would shackle myself to some unwashed, filthy mess like yourself for the rest of my life.”

Bucky yanks his wrist back, but Steve holds it. “Well I’m sorry I’m not good enough for you, Your Fucking Highness.” He yanks at his wrist again, and his eyes rake down Steve’s body. He starts cackling and shaking his head. “Looks like your dick still hasn’t gotten the memo, though.”

Steve glances down. He’s half hard, his sweatpants bulging.

Steve lets go of Bucky’s wrist and steps back. “You are the worst person I have ever met in my life. I am not attracted to you.”

Bucky follows him, gets in his space, palms him. He feels Steve’s dick twitch hard under his hand. “ _Sure_ you aren’t. This happen often, Rogers? You ND a lot? Or are you just all horny on main all of a sudden because I am actually your Soulmate.”

(Because sure, call him an asshole if you will, but Bucky’s just thought of a whole better way of getting over his depressive spiral than chowing elephant drugs: getting Steve Rogers angry enough to fuck him into submission.)

So Bucky palms him again and feels Steve moving into full hardness. He drops his voice into a rough purr. Steve is positively vibrating with anger, bright red, but his dick is already leaving a wet mark on is sweatpants. It’s _glorious_. “Wanna take this somewhere more private, _Captain_?”

Steve just about screams in frustration and shoves Bucky away so hard Bucky stumbles into a table, almost knocking it over. Steve’s fists clench and unclench at his sides, every muscle in That Body tense, ready for a fight.

Bucky marches right up to him, squeezes one of his absurd nipples through his t-shirt, and says, “Come on, _bitch_ ,” and sashays into the back room, undoing his pants as he walks. Steve doesn’t move, except to shiver and hiss at him in fury when Bucky abuses his nipple.

Bucky has slow-counted to ten, in the back room by himself, and he figures that he’s calculated wrong, that Steve bailed, when Steve comes through the door like an avenging angel. His fury is a palpable presence around him. Bucky loves it when a plan comes together. 

Steve grabs Bucky by the hair (again), and throws him over his knee as he sits down on a box. He pulls Bucky’s jeans and boxers down in one yank and there Bucky is, bent over Steve Rogers’ knees, ass in the air, cock hard and stuck between Steve’s massive thigh and his own stomach.

“I’m. Tired. Of. Your. Bullshit,” Steve says, slapping Bucky’s ass hard on every word. And yeah, wow. Bucky is an awful, filthy degenerate because being spanked by Captain America is turning his crank in ways he never imagined. Jesus Christ. He wants to sass Steve some more, but he’s afraid of what will come out of his mouth if he opens it right now.

So he settles on writhing on Steve’s lap and moaning, “More.”

Steve obliges him, landing a good ten more smacks on his ass, telling Bucky how much he hates his hair, and his shitty clothes, and his bad attitude. Bucky just laughs.

Steve’s hands are grabbing and spreading his ass now, rubbing where he’d spanked Bucky, keeping the heat from dissipating, and Bucky hisses his pain and his pleasure. “But I believe owe you one.”

Bucky hasn’t exactly been following the thread of the conversation so he gasps in surprise when Steve manhandles him so Bucky is sitting in Steve’s lap, legs splayed, back against Steve’s chest.

Steve tweaks his nipple. “I owe you for this,” he says. Bucky’s entire body lights up like a live wire, arching almost out of Steve’s lap.

Steve grabs him, puts his hand on Bucky’s left bicep and squeezes, covering his Words, as if he can suffocate them out of existence.

Then Steve reaches down with his other hand and starts jerking Bucky off. “And I owe you this.” Big, calloused hand over his dick. Steve rubbing his stubble into Bucky’s neck, breathing in his ear, brushing lips over his jaw. Yeah, this was definitely a great call.

Bucky starts moaning. Steve covers his mouth, and jerks him faster as he writhes in Steve’s lap, ass still stinging from earlier. Steve starts petting him, taking his free hand off his mouth and stroking down Bucky’s chest, playing with his nipples. God, Steve’s hands are so _large_. It’s like they’re everywhere at once. He tries to scream when he comes, but Steve’s big hand is back over his mouth and all that comes out is a muffled groan. He comes so hard he whites out for a moment.

And then he realises that his lower back is sticky and hot. At some point Steve has come, too.

Steve lets go of him and he slumps bonelessly to the floor, his head lolling against Steve’s thigh.

But Steve is already getting up, wiping himself down with a dishrag, putting himself away. “There,” Steve says. “Now you’ve gotten what you want.” He throws the dishrag at Bucky. “Tidy yourself up. I’m calling the outreach program in the morning, they’ll transfer you to another coffee shop. Goodbye, Bucky.”

Bucky finishes his shift and heads home, in the opposite direction from all the morning commuters heading into Manhattan. All the normal people.

He’s really high from what he did with Steve. There’s no other word for it. For six hours, he feels on top of the world.

And then the crash comes.

The depression’s so bad Bucky can’t bring himself to leave his apartment.

They finally chuck him out of the outreach programme after he doesn’t show up at his (new, better-paid) job for a week, and refuses to answer calls or visits from his outreach worker.

It had only been a matter of time.

One night at 3am when Bucky’s been up for about 48 hours straight, he finds a trial medical programme that promises to remove Words. To remove unwanted Soulbonds. It looks shady as fuck. 

But he can be rid of Steve Rogers. He can have a normal life again.

He calls the number.

  
* * *

  
It’s been a week since he and Bucky fooled around in the back room of the coffee shop and Steve can’t get it out of his head. Can’t get _Bucky_ out of his head. Every single thing about him is annoying, from his bad attitude and his smelly hair to his unkempt appearance, and Steve should be glad he’s gone, should be at peace, but he’s just even more keyed up than before now.

He’s not sleeping, either. Every time he shuts his eyes he feels Bucky’s body writhing against him, like some sort of phantom erotic pain. He dreams about all the things he didn’t do, like place his fingers under that sharp jaw and draw Bucky’s mouth to his, kissing him, claiming all that fire and fury and sweetness for himself.

He stomps into the common area of the Tower, mostly to check the status of any possible mission he could go on, because he needs to get out of New York. God, where’s a good old alien invasion when you need one? Why aren’t there more villains? Does evil take Christmas off? He really fucking hopes not.

Clint waves at Steve. “Hey, Steve. Where’s the cute barista that hates you?”

“I had him transferred,” Steve grunts.

Clint sits up, face aghast. “But we _love_ him. Oh my god, I want to have that Captain Asshole cup dipped in gold. Where did he go?”

“I dunno,” Steve sighs. “I specifically asked them not to tell me.”

“Are you happier now?” Natasha says, walking over to lean next to him on the counter.

“Yes,” he says, quickly.

Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“…No.” Steve throws up his arms, exasperated. “I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about him. It doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t make me happy, Natasha.”

“No,” she drawls. “But he makes you _alive_.”

Something in Steve’s gut clenches at that. Clenches around the enormous empty space that’s been echoing around within him, aching, since he didn’t have Bucky Barnes around any more to get mad at.

“Maybe this is what happiness looks like for you, Steve,” Natasha says quietly. “I can’t really see you in a quiet, peaceful relationship. You’re only interested in challenges. Once you figure out the challenge, you’re done with it.”

He thinks of Bucky then, because of course he does, the way he taunts Steve. Teasing him, knowing what buttons to press to get Steve to lose his temper. And he hates the warm coil of arousal in his stomach that ignites at those thoughts.

He grabs a coffee from the machine (not as good as Bucky’s, and no insulting messages on the cup) and sits down next to Clint, staring resentfully at the TV. He couldn’t tell you what was on, but it helps to stare at the big box full of coloured lights. It counts as something to do. It means nobody tries to talk to him.

Until Tony breezes in a few minutes later, of course.

He’s fresh off the plane from Malibu, Pepper trailing behind him. He tosses a red notebook at Steve, its pages yellowed with age. “Steve, hi, this was in Howard’s files, it’s for you. Sorry, took me a while to find. Daddy-O didn’t exactly keep organised notes.”

Pepper snorts out a laugh behind him. “Pot, kettle,” she mouths.

“Darling, that’s why I have you. And Jarvis.” Tony says. Then he points at Steve. “Tell me if it’s anything juicy.”

Steve puts his shitty coffee aside and opens the notebook. It’s a soft little leather-bound graph paper notebook; he recognises it immediately as the kind Howard favoured. He always had a half-dozen of these on the go, and boxes more already filled.

There’s a letter tucked in the front cover, with his name scrawled on it in Howard’s messy cursive.

He looks up, and Clint and Natasha are pretending to be interested in the contents of the fridge. They’re making a smoothie incredibly slowly, giving him space and privacy.

He opens Howard’s letter.

_Dear Steve—_

_Good news, old chap. You definitely have a Soulmate. Or at least you have as much chance of a Soulmate as the rest of us poor schmucks do. The Serum represses many of the initial signs, and you may never have Words. But aside from those physical quirks, you’re just like anyone else. There is someone out there with your Words on them. This notebook contains my tests and proofs, because I know you want to see for yourself. Be patient, and don’t give up hope. — H_

Steve closes his eyes and shoves the tears down that threaten suddenly to consume him. He’s normal. He is _normal_. There is someone for him. Someone who has his Words.

And he’d been an absolute, unforgivable jerk to that person.

“I-I’m sorry, I need to make a phone call,” he stutters, getting off the sofa and staggering to the balcony. It’s 35 degrees out, and sunny, and the cold feels like a sort of penance.

Steve dials the outreach programme. The nice lady is the same one she spoke to before, and he can hear the unfaked concern in her voice when she tells Steve that Bucky never showed up to his new job. That his outreach counselor had tried to get in touch with him by phone and in person multiple times with no luck.

Steve startles when he realises Tony is standing next to him, hands in pockets, expectant expression on his face.

“Tony,” Steve breathes, as he ends the call, “I need to find the home address of one of the vets in your outreach programme.”

Tony not only gets Bucky’s number, but organises a car for Steve, and then insists on coming with him, for “moral support.”

“Tony, you have no morals,” Steve grumbles as Tony climbs in the car next to him.

“I do, they’re just very small and weak, and they need all the support they can get,” Tony says. “Happy! Drive on.” He looks at Steve. “We’re crossing the East River. I hope you’ve gotten all your shots and packed your passport.”

“I grew up in Brooklyn,” Steve grumbles.

It takes an hour in midmorning traffic to get to Bucky’s place, and it takes Tony under two minutes to pick the locks.

Bucky is gone. Steve looks around and sees that his favourite clothes are gone too. Steve doesn’t know _how_ he knows what Bucky’s favourite clothes are, but he does. And this forces him to admit to himself he’s been looking at Bucky a lot harder than he thought he had.

Tony is bent over Bucky’s old laptop, typing furiously, and then he lets out a low, quiet string of curses.

“What is it?” Steve asks, hustling across the small space to look over Tony’s shoulder.

“You want the bad news, Cap, or the _really_ bad news?” Tony says.

Steve gestures. _What does it all matter now anyway_ , he thinks. How could anything be worse than it is now.

Tony looks at him, his brown eyes lined with worry and exhaustion. “He’s signed up for an experimental programme to remove Soulbonds. He’s trying to get rid of his Words.”

“But that’s impossible,” Steve says.

“Yeah, it should be,” Tony muses. “But I’m pretty sure this company is a Hydra front. Fury had me looking into them out in California. And Hydra are not exactly concerned with the boundaries of ethics in their experiments, if you know what I mean.”

“So he’s at a Hydra base in California?” Steve says, his voice dropping as anger consumes him. If they’ve hurt Bucky—

“No, Steve, down,” Tony says, shutting the laptop and tucking it under his arm. “I was in California. We don’t know where the Hydra lab is.”

“Find it,” Steve hisses.

“Steve,” Tony says. “I can’t believe I’m the one suggesting we act like mature adults, yet here we are. We are bringing Fury on, and we’re going in sensibly, with backup. You are not going to rush off by yourself.”

Steve sits down heavily on the mattress on the floor. It smells like Bucky, and the scent is like a knife in the guts to Steve. “Tony, I’ve driven my Soulmate away so hard he’s decided being a Hydra guinea pig is better than me. I am damn well going to rush off.”

“Where? Steve, where? We need Fury because, much as you want to punch something, right now we don’t know where they took him. Also, congratulations, et cetera, on the whole Soulmate thing.”

Steve just groans and puts his head in his hands.

Fury and Coulson are waiting for them at the Tower when they return. It turns out Bucky’s enlistment in the programme is what they need to crack the case. The emails he’s exchanged give enough information that they can track him to a registration site in New Jersey, then track the van he was transported in to a lab in Tennessee. But it takes two days, and that means Bucky’s been with Hydra for almost a week by the time they come crashing into the lab, high up in the Smoky Mountains.

There are ten people strapped to metal tables. Some are already dead. None are Bucky.

Natasha looks at Steve, shakes her head, and shrugs.

Steve’s body vibrates with an ugly mix of fury, self-hatred, and terror. His hands open and close by his sides. “I know he’s here. I can feel him.” The empty place in his soul isn’t as empty any more. It’s like it’s reaching out for someone. Someone close by.

“Where’s your Soulmate, Steve, go find him,” Natasha says. Then she grimaces. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but follow your heart.”

“Jarvis, did you get that on audio?” Tony whispers through the comms. “Make it my new ringtone, and also start working on a techno remix.”

But Steve is already heading out. He goes by instinct, half-wondering if he’s crazy. The weird tug on his heart leads him deeper into the lab, further into the mountain, to a door that lets out into an underground rail. An old mine line.

A half dozen Hydra soldiers and a couple men in lab coats are loading two bodies on gurneys onto a small rail car.

Steve finishes them all off, with prejudice.

The body on the first gurney is a Latina woman, unconscious, barely breathing.

The body on the second gurney is Bucky. He looks feverish, barely conscious, his eyes unfocused, in his tattered thermal shirt and shaggy hair.

And Steve lets himself think what he has never been willing to admit until now: that Bucky is beautiful.

“Hi Buck,” he says, brushing Bucky’s hair off his sweaty brow. “It’s Steve. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Bucky’s eyes focus on him, blearily, and Bucky smiles that brilliant smile of his. “Damn right it is,” Bucky croaks out.

Bucky slips a hand out from under the webbing restraining him, and rips the thin fabric of his shirt over his left bicep. “It worked. I’m finally free of you. Asshole.”

Then Bucky passes out again.

Steve stares down at Bucky’s arm. Over his left bicep, the skin is pure and clear. The Words are gone.

Steve staggers over and leans against the rough stone wall of the mine tunnel, overcome with vertigo. He feels like he’s about to fall off the world, deep down into that mine, into an endless dark shaft with no bottom.

And what’s worse, he knows he deserves it. He took the one chance of happiness he had and basically shot it in the face.

The rest of the team arrives, and then SHIELD EMTs come and take Bucky and the other prisoner away, and Steve just stands there, adrift, until Natasha takes his hand and leads him back to the Quinjet.

Steve exists on autopilot for the rest of the week. Going through the motions of living, his mind flashing back all the time to pressing himself against a lean, angry snake of a body, at having Bucky in his lap, arched in desire, his hand over Bucky’s mouth to muffle his moans.

Fury debriefs them all towards the end of the week. The lab had definitely been Hydra, and they’d been experimenting with a variant of the super-soldier serum. Ten of the subjects had flatlined, and one was in a medically-induced coma and was never expected to come out of it.

“What about Bucky?” Steve asks.

“He’s our only survivor,” Fury says. “He’s stable, for now. But we still don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

Natasha snorts. “He’ll make it. If nothing else, out of spite.”

“Natasha,” Steve says.

“What? That was a compliment.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky wakes up feeling not as bad as he’d expected. He’s in a hospital, which isn’t much of a surprise. He vaguely remembers something going terribly wrong at the Program, people dying, and then everything in his head gets pretty confusing.

He thinks he remembers telling Steve to fuck off, but he couldn’t tell if it was a dream. Anyway, what would Steve have been doing in Tennessee? Wait, _was_ he still in Tennessee? The nurse who came in to bring him ice chips and fluids had a really strong New Jersey accent so probably not. He asks her what happened and she says she doesn’t know and he should rest more and she puts something in his IV and everything goes sparkly for a while.

He looks down at his arm. _That_ hadn’t been a dream. The Words were gone. He didn’t feel half-empty any more. He felt… _good_ , actually. Really achey, like he’d just done a particularly stupidly heavy workout. Ugh, he missed working out. Why did he stop? Oh yeah, depression.

The sparkly feeling goes away too fast, and he’s left having to take a piss and his stomach growling so loudly they can probably hear it from the Nurses’ Station.

He disconnects his IV, frowns at his hospital gown, and rolls out of bed. The room is small, and he tosses it, looking for his Patient Belongings bag. It’s not there. So he improvises a toga out of one of the shitty, thin hospital blankets (his bare ass is private viewing only, thank you very much), puts on a pair of the nubbly-soled hospital socks, and prepares to go in search of Real Food. Because seriously, he’s going to die if he doesn’t get something to eat soon. His stomach is busy trying to turn itself inside out.

But the motherfuckers have locked his damn door, by accident. He twists the knob again and shakes it. The door remains locked. Fuck. He briefly considers calling a nurse, but he should be able to just walk out and find one.

He gives the door one more yank, angry and frustrated, and there’s a splintering sound and the door comes off hinges. Bucky stares at it, in his hand. The whole door. Okay, so everything must still be a bit sparkly because that doesn’t make sense. Maybe they just build everything shitty in New Jersey. Yeah, that checks out. He’s probably in the cheap hospital anyway, fuck knows his medical coverage isn’t up to much.

So Bucky does the thing any sane person would after accidentally damaging municipal property: props the door gently against the wall to make it look as unbroken as possible, as if it’s just all the way open, and then fucks off as fast as he can.

There were some cops patrolling the hallway but please, Bucky had done black ops for a decade, it was almost fun to slip past them again.

He finds the cafeteria and its sweet sweet array of hospital food, and _hallefuckinglujah_. He lines up four vanilla puddings and four chocolate ones and three ice teas and heads to a table. He feels he hasn’t eaten in forever. It’s so good. Not very nutritious, but fuck it, nutrition is Future Bucky’s problem. Also, hospital pudding is delicious and he’ll fight anyone who thinks different. Except Butterscotch. Butterscotch is Satan’s Own Flavour.

Halfway through Vanilla Pudding #3, a black man with an eyepatch sits down opposite him. Bucky puts a forearm in front of his puddings, protectively. The man can get his own.

“You know who I am?” The man says.

Bucky eyerolls. “You’re Nick Fury. I’d occasionally get ops briefings from you when I was in the Service.”

Fury smiles. “It’s good to see you again, Sergeant Barnes. You remember Hydra, right?”

Bucky nods. They’d had a couple hairy ops against them in the northern mountains of Afghanistan. Finding things in bases he still didn’t want to talk about.

“Well, they were behind the program you signed up for,” Fury says, leaning forwards and lacing his fingers together on the table. “You know what they did to you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, reaching for his second chocolate pudding. “Got rid of an unwanted Soulbond.”

“You recall leaving your room just now?” Fury asks.

Bucky groans. “My memory is fine. Everything hurts, but my head is okay. So yes, I do.”

“Anything unusual about how you left your room? In the lockdown unit? With the armed patrol?” Fury is smiling now, damn him.

Bucky blushes. “The door was broken,” he mumbles.

Fury’s grin turns sharklike. “The steel-reinforced, locked door was fine. You tore it off its hinges.”

Bucky makes a face. “Nah. Didn’t happen.”

Fury leans back. “Sergeant, a side-effect of the super-soldier serum is it makes your Words invisible. It doesn’t get rid of them, nor your Soulbond, but it makes the Words themselves invisible. We found that with Captain Rogers.”

“Oh no,” Bucky says. “NO.”

“Yes,” Fury says. “And you’re Hydra’s only successful test subject. Do you know what that means?”

“MotherFUCK,” says Bucky.

“You’re currently unemployed, are you not?” says Fury.

 

* * *

 

Steve calls Fury every day, asking after Bucky. After the first few days, Fury either doesn’t answer or passes his call to Coulson. The answer is always the same: “We can’t make any information available at this time.”

Natasha and Clint won’t help, and Tony turns him down flat when he asks him to hack SHIELD’s database.

“Tony, you hacked SHIELD’s database yesterday to find out Coulson’s Fantasy Baseball picks,” Steve pouts.

“This is different,” Tony sniffs.

“I liked you better when you didn’t have morals,” Steve grumbles.

The worst part is for Steve, now that he knows what to call that empty space inside of him — not normal, he thought it was normal, and then it was filled by six foot of shaggy-haired infuriating asshole — it’s all he can ever feel. The lack of his Soulmate.

Two weeks after Bucky’s rescue he has a night of awful, restless dreams, of grey eyes, angry and brave, of lab tables and dead bodies, their faces rictuses of horror and pain, and he wishes so hard that Bucky were still down in the coffee shop, that he could go down and they could annoy the daylights out of each other and then maybe do something deeply unhygienic in the back room.

But no. He had no idea where Bucky was, or how he was, and the people that did weren’t telling him.

And he wasn’t Steve’s Soulmate, either. Not any more.

When he gets up the next morning and stumbles into the bathroom, he freezes when he sees himself in the mirror. There’s a bare strip of flesh visible between his boxer briefs and his t-shirt.

Except it’s not bare any more.

Right along the line of his hip, on his Adonis belt, are three words in cramped, boxy, all-caps handwriting. The shapes of those blue letters are instantly familiar from angry names scrawled on coffee cups.

His Words say, _GO TO HELL_.

He can’t help it. He breaks into giggles, and it turns into a sort of hysteria, and he leans against the mirror hiccuping to himself with helpless laughter for what seems like ages.

He runs to Natasha and Clint’s apartment and bangs on their door. Natasha opens it, looking immaculate, and Clint peeks over her shoulder, looking like he’s been run over by a truck (and loved every minute of it.)

He hikes up his shirt and points to the Words.

“Holy shit, Steve,” she whispers.

“It’s a Saturnalia Miracle,” gasps Clint.

And then Steve remembers.

“No it’s not. He doesn’t have my Words any more.”

“Steve, you didn’t have his Words when you first met him,” Natasha says. “Have some hope.”

Steve narrows his eyes. “Thought you were a pessimist.”

“I’m logical,” Natasha hums.

Steve throws himself into missions. Luckily, kicking over the Hydra lab in Tennessee has not only annoyed Hydra, it’s also given SHIELD a lot of information about Hydra’s other activities.

He does his weekly meetings with PR and tries to be better to fans, more patient. Because now he knows what it’s like to feel passionately for someone and have them be out of reach.

But he doesn’t tell anyone about his Words.

They find Hydra’s biggest base yet, thanks to a small anti-Hydra op SHIELD had been running with its own people. (Steve is somewhat jealous he wasn’t invited along, and even more annoyed when Fury just raises his eyebrows and tells Steve point-blank that he wasn’t needed.) The base is in the mountains of Chile, and it houses a veritable army.

It’s going to be a combined SHIELD / Avengers op, with Strike teams supporting each Avenger. Fury briefs them separately, and Steve tunes most of it out until Fury talks abut their Strike Support. “We got some new recruits and new teams, I just want you all to behave and give them a chance.”

“Just tell them to stay out of my way,” Steve growls.

“Captain Rogers,” Fury says, his tone weary. “We’re fighting an army. Sheer numbers means the chance of somebody getting a lucky shot in on one of you is very high. You will respect your support teams because in a very real way they will be keeping you from ending up in ICU.”

Steve grunts. Not like Strike could keep up with him anyway.

They hit the base at dawn the next day. Steve gets his usual Strike team behind him. They’re fine, they know to leave him room to work, and they mainly exist so he can keep momentum going forwards, disarming and disabling anyone he misses, and doing demolition work when necessary.

Natasha has one of the new teams, though. Which is _not_ good. Steve knows Natasha, she’s not a team player, not really, and Strike guys tend to be on the more neanderthal spectrum, expecting that the pretty girl needs more help than she does.

Steve finds his eyes keep sliding over in her direction, at first to check she’s safe…

…And then to check out the Strike leader, because _what the holy fuck_. Talk about leading from the front. And boy does he fill out that tac suit. Like most of the Strike leaders, he wears eyepro and a mask, both for safety and to conceal his identity. He works beautifully with Natasha, a sort of co-ordinated ballet of extremely targeted, precise violence. Beyond that, there is something about the way he moves… that’s not _right_. Not normal.

Steve realises what it is when the man bends the barrel of a T-90 tank’s 125mm main gun. Not a lot, but enough to ensure that no more shells would be coming out of it.

He’s enhanced as hell.

And _uhh_ … Steve shakes his head, needing to get it back in the fight. Apparently punching dents in tanks is something that gets Steve’s libido going, and this is really not the time—

Then the guy turns and points his rifle at Steve.

Steve tenses as he feels the bullet whiz past his ear, then turns to see a Hydra stormtrooper’s head explode, and the machine gun he’d been training at Steve fall to the ground.

Steve throws the guy a dazed salute and breaks left, deciding that the only way to make it through the fight without further embarrassment is to split off from Natasha. He leads his men into what looks like a tech building and starts to clean house.

On the way back to the FOB, Steve smiles at Natasha. “Looks like you got the pick of the litter of the new Strike puppies,” he says.

“Mm-mm,” Natasha grins back. “I’m keeping that one.”

“Hey!” Clint says.

“I’m keeping you too, baby,” Natasha purrs, putting her head on her Soulmate’s shoulder. “But he can punch tanks.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “That was… really hot.”

“Don’t worry, baby,” Natasha whispers, patting Clint’s scruffy cheek. “He’s taken.”

And Steve feels a sharp stab of irrational jealousy at that.

Steve is on the way back to the officers’ quarters set aside for the Avengers back at base when he sees Natasha’s Strike leader chatting to his team in the doorway of what must be their barracks.

The guy’s back is to him, broad shoulders and thin wasp waist, and his goggles shoved up in short, wavy dark hair, shaved underneath. And he’s laughing, bright and happy.

Steve goes up to him, drawn towards him as if on a string. He taps the guy on the shoulder.

He has all sorts of things he’s about to say ( _nice fighting, want to spar sometime, how are you enhanced, where are you from_ ) but they all completely leave him when the guy turns around.

It’s Bucky.

It’s Bucky and he’s shaved and his hair is short and it just makes his eyes look bigger and accentuates his already amazing cheekbones and… _guh_.

Steve’s mouth opens and closes. No sound comes out.

The clouds part and an actual goddamn sunbeam illuminates them both in a shaft of soft golden light as Bucky smiles sweetly at him and says, “Go to hell.”

Steve feels a line of fire along his hip. He wants to show Bucky, make him _realise_ , but he’s still in his Captain America uniform and there’s no way he can get to that part of his anatomy without about five minutes of awkward unhooking.

So instead Steve just shakes his head, looks Bucky in the eyes, and says what he should have said long ago. What he _really_ should have said first, that morning in the coffee shop: “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He draws out the pause for a good three seconds, before adding, “But yet still a complete asshole.” Then he turns on his heel to stomp off.

As he walks away, he hears Bucky’s Strike team howl their laughter, and Bucky is just swearing a blue streak. But then Steve hears one of his soldiers say, “Sarge, man, good thing your Words were only that first sentence,” and then there’s more laughter. Another voice chimes in: “Never seemed to fit Sarge, those Words, but now it all makes sense!”

But Steve is frozen in place, his heart beating so loud he’s surprised everyone can’t hear it. “Buck,” he says, his voice cracking. And fuck it, he rips the uniform as he strides back over. “Buck, look,” he says, and he shows them all the three golden words along the line of his pelvis.

“You know where mine are,” Bucky says, crossing his thick arms, and Steve can feel Bucky’s eyes on him, burning along his body like fire, on those Words in his handwriting.

“Show me anyway,” Steve says, breathless.

Bucky undoes the buckles of his tac jacket and slips it off over his head. He’s only wearing a thin grey SHIELD PT tee underneath, and Steve can see the shine of gold letters around his left bicep. Steve wants to reach out and touch them, to kiss them. To thank them for coming back. But he thinks Bucky might punch him if he tried.

“What are you doing later?” Steve says, his voice rough with need.

“You,” Bucky replies.

 

* * *

 

It was almost pathetic how easily Fury had reeled him in to SHIELD. Insinuating that Hydra would be coming after its asset, and he stood more of a chance at SHIELD than at home in Brooklyn. Offering free medical care, because apparently his body was going to be weird for the foreseeable future as it settled down from Hydra’s experiments. Offering a job and a purpose again.

And it was _definitely_ pathetic how much Bucky liked being back in the military. He understood this life; he was good at it. He had a brand new body that was solid muscle, his hands were steadier than ever, and he could move faster and hit harder than anyone else on base, by a long way.

The only problem was Steve Fucking Rogers. Not that Bucky saw him — Fury had made good on his promise about that. No. Even without Steve’s Words on his arm, he couldn’t get Steve out of his damn mind.

But he worked, and trained, and settled into his new unit, and they even brought the Black Widow in to train him harder, and still, every night, in his head, Steve Goddamn Rogers.

And when he wakes up three weeks into his time at Shield HQ with new goddamn Words on his arm, in that gratingly neat cursive, he wrecks his room, and then he goes down and wrecks every punching bag in the gym. Even the special ones they’d gotten for him.

“Can you control yourself if we spar today?” Natasha says, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed and a look of reproach in her clever eyes.

“No promises,” he says.

“What’s wrong?” Natasha asks.

Bucky points to his arm. “It didn’t fucking work,” he snarls.

Natasha laughs so hard she has to sit down. “Hydra have been trying to reproduce the Serum since 1943, and they finally do it, and you’re mad because your Words came back.”

“They’re different words,” Bucky grumbles.

Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“…They’re still his,” he says.

“You going to go to Hydra and ask for your money back?” Natasha grins. She’s still laughing at him.

Bucky picks up a length of chain from one of the broken bags, and wraps it around his first. “You know?” He says, his smile turning savage. “I think I will.”

Fury starts sending him on missions then, solo or with his new unit. It’s going mostly great, he’s assuaging his feelings by punching fascists, until that shitshow in Chile.

Hydra has a whole army waiting for them. He’s backing up the Widow when that broad-shouldered patriotic fuckwit in his unnecessarily skin-tight uniform stops in the middle of a battle to stare at him after he punches a T-90. He shoots the guy about to fill said fuckwit full of bullets, and if he aims closer than he needs to Steve’s head, well, that’s between him and God.

And then Steve marches over, once they get back to base, and in all the time Bucky had been at SHIELD he’d managed to almost convince himself that he was wrong about Steve, that he couldn’t be as annoying as he remembered.

But no. He’s actually _much_ worse.

Bucky wants to laugh that Steve finally has his Words. Instead he’s stuck — they’re both stuck, at opposite ends of a room — in a seemingly endless debrief with Coulson over the day’s battle. Which he’s not listening to, really, because he’s got more important things on his mind: a most excellent plan.

He enacts it as soon as they leave the briefing.

First, he vanishes.

He figures Steve isn’t good enough with the Soulbond yet, if they even have a real one, to be able to find Bucky using it, and he’s right. Steve wanders around the camp for a while in the dark, increasingly frustrated, looking for Bucky, until he gives up and goes back to his room.

Where Bucky gets the drop on him.

He gets his hand over Steve’s mouth and Steve shoved up chest against the wall before Steve can react.

“Hey, you know what it’s like when someone uses their super strength to shove you against the wall and molest you?” Bucky breathes in Steve’s ear.

Steve goes tense.

“It’s actually really fucking hot. Hi, by the way, I’m a complete pervert, you should probably know that about me.” Bucky shifts, then, grinding his cock into Steve’s ass, still clothed as it is in the Captain America uniform. “The best bit, though, is when they don’t let you come, so you’re forced to have porn dreams about it for every waking second for the next week.” Bucky brushes his lips against Steve’s neck, feels how his pulse is going rabbit-fast. “”Guess what’s going to happen, Steve,” he purrs, as he slips a hand down the front of Steve’s uniform, through the hole he’d torn to show Bucky his Words.

He puts his hand around Steve’s cock, and starts to stroke. Steve is, gratifyingly, already hard. Steve tries to say something, but Bucky covers his mouth tighter with his free hand. “Ah-ah, Steve. This is payback. I’m going to edge you until you can’t remember your own name. Until you pass out. How do you feel about that?”

And the fucking punk grinds back against Bucky, who’s also hard, because apparently desecrating national icons revs his engines. “Oh, that’s how it is? Is that what you want? Want me to fuck you right here against the wall?”

And Steve whines under his hand, nodding his head _yes_.

“Hm. No,” Bucky says.

He lets go of Steve’s cock long enough to move them against the window. They’re on the top floor of an old block of officers’ quarters, and glass balcony doors give them a view of the entire camp, Nobody can really see in, because there’s only a small lamp lit in the room, but it still feels incredibly exposed.

“That’s better,” Bucky whispers. “Look at all those people down there. What would they think if they could see you up here? You’re gagging for it, Steve.”

Steve shivers, and tries to back away from the cold surface of the glass, but all that happens is he backs into Bucky.

Bucky takes his hand off Steve’s mouth long enough to rip the uniform further, widening the hole to expose Steve’s ass.

“Bucky,” Steve says, and he sounds so damn stoic, Bucky pulls out the lube he stashed in his back pocket, lubes up two fingers, and shoves them both into Steve. He can feel Steve go up on his toes, and hears the little moan that slips out and his own dick twitches hard at that, and he’s about to resume jerking Steve off when he remembers how Steve reacted to his nipples being played with before.

God, there was so much to do to Steve Goddamn Rogers.

Bucky worms a hand up under the front of the uniform while continuing to scissor Steve open with his other hand. He can feel the moment he hits Steve’s prostate, because Steve keens, and Bucky pinches one of his nipples at the same time, gripping a fistful of pec and squeezing it, before pinching the other nipple, and moving his hand down to Steve’s cock again.

Steve is thrusting back hard against him now, moaning the whole time.

Bucky lubes himself up and slips in. Christ, it’s so _good_. This was such a good plan. “Gonna rail you until you see stars baby,” he mutters in Steve’s ear, his voice rough with desire.

And Steve, goddamn Steve, tips his head back against Bucky’s shoulder and says “Yes, give it to me hard, Buck,” and Bucky just about loses his mind because Steve might be the most annoying asshole in New York but he’s gorgeous and he’s tight and so pliant and this is _not at all_ what was supposed to happen.

So Bucky starts slamming home, and jerking Steve off at the same time, and it’s like they’re perfectly in sync, even their breathing is the same, and Bucky can feel his orgasm building and then Steve’s balls tighten up and Bucky remembers his plan just in time.

He pulls out at the last minute and squeezes the base of Steve’s cock, coming all over Steve’s ass as he jerks himself through his orgasm and denies Steve his.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s hot come is splashing over his ass and he’s desperate to come, feeling empty, his ass clutching at air, but Bucky is stumbling back, and sitting on Steve’s bed, looking dazed and incredibly well fucked and mad as he is at Bucky, he’s got to admit it’s a _fantastic_ look on him.

And it’s time for revenge. Because there are things he bets Bucky doesn’t know yet about the Serum.

“Jesus,” Bucky moans. “Your ass…” he says.

Steve stalks over and falls as gracefully as he can to his knees in front of Bucky. “You’re only saying that because you’ve never had my mouth,” Steve says, then he leans forwards and swallows Bucky down in one go.

Bucky’s hands fall on his shoulders and squeeze hard, and Bucky himself moans, high and surprised, and Steve can tell the moment Bucky realises he’s getting hard again. That the Serum basically reduces his refractory period to zero.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Bucky chokes out, as his cock fills again in Steve’s mouth.

Steve sucks him hard and relentless and deep, and uses some of the lube and come from his own ass to slick up his index finger so he can hook it in Bucky’s ass and massage his prostate between that finger and thumb.

Bucky arches in that beautiful way he has, his new, broader, ultra-defined chest bowing outwards, and Steve someday needs to take some time with that, and abuse his dark little nipples, and all those little freckles scattered across his skin, Steve needs to bite every one of them, and mark him all up, but right now he’s going to make Bucky come again so quickly he won’t be able to think afterwards.

And he knows Bucky’s close, because the man is babbling now, about the time Steve dragged him into the back room, and how it got him so hot to be spanked, and how they need to do that again and it probably makes him some sorta sick fuck to want Steve to beat him up but he _really_ does, and so Steve scratches his teeth down in the hair at the base of Bucky’s cock and Bucky cries out and comes hard, flooding Steve’s mouth, and he swallows it all down.

Bucky’s looking at him, pale eyes shining with wonder, and he reaches out and cups Steve’s face and brings him up and brushes his lips across Steve’s spit- and come-stained ones and says, “You’re so beautiful, you’re going to be the death of me,” and then he kisses Steve, slow and dirty, and Steve realises that this is the first time they’ve kissed, but somehow it’s _perfect_ , and Steve kisses him back just as filthy and then pulls away and says, “I hate you.” And Bucky says “I hate you so much too,” and kisses him again.

Then Bucky throws him down on the bed and eats him out until he nearly comes again, and by then Steve’s begging for Bucky to fuck him again and Bucky does, and he may never get used to how perfect Bucky’s dick feels in him, and then for the fourth time in a row Bucky cuts off Steve’s orgasm and Steve at this point is one giant nerve ending and Bucky says “I’ll be right back, gonna get a cloth to clean up” because of course he’d come in Steve’s ass again…

…and then the bastard never comes back.

They fly out at 0600 and Steve is just about shaking with frustration as he rolls onto the Quinjet in his PT gear, he’s had two hours of what can loosely be called sleep and apparently his body isn’t letting him get off unless it’s Bucky touching him and he fondly remembers the wonderful, peaceful days when he thought he’d never have a Soulmate.

Unfortunately apparently everyone overheard his and Bucky’s little exchange of Words and he’s met on the plane with lots of nods and knowing smirks from the Avengers.

And then, less than a minute before wheels up, Bucky rolls onto the plane, in that stupid, figure-hugging tac uniform with its excessive amount of straps and holsters. He winks at Steve and flops into the jump seat opposite him, lounging legs akimbo like some sort of large and very satisfied cat.

Natasha glances over at him. “You look well, Bucky,” she says.

Bucky yawns and stretches, grinning. “Slept like a log. Missed breakfast, though, so hope you don’t mind.” And then Bucky Fucking Barnes pulls out a goddamn popsicle, unwraps it, and starts sucking it. It’s some sort of grape flavour, and it stains his lips purple.

Steve is going to die. Or embarrass himself horribly in front of his whole team. He is wearing thin sweatpants and he needs to come really, really badly.

“You are such an asshole,” Steve whispers.

Bucky smiles and blows him a kiss. His lips are stained dark from the popsicle. “Want some?” He says.

He holds the popsicle over to Steve, and Steve glares at him long enough that a drop of melted juice flows down the popsicle’s slick surface. Bucky sticks out that long tongue of his, that tongue that had been halfway up Steve’s ass last night, and catches it before it falls.

Tony ambles back from the cockpit a moment later, when Bucky has leaned back in his seat and is sucking on the popsicle, pretending to be all innocent as he hollows his cheeks.

“Hey, you know I have a theory about why your Words came back and—“ Tony begins. “Wow, you could actually use the sexual tension back here as a deadly weapon.” He turns around and heads back towards the cockpit. “The bathrooms in the quinjet are _one_ , not large enough for both of you and _two_ , have no soundproofing.”

Bucky makes a sloppy salute in Tony’s direction, and then bites the top off the popsicle. It bulges in the corner of his cheek.

Steve groans. “How long is the flight to New York?” he calls after Tony.

“Eight hours, Cap.”

Steve is going to _die_.

Bucky falls asleep again after finishing his popsicle, his face relaxed and handsome as he sprawls in his seat.

Steve’s entire body thrums with the need to be closer to him. He could reach out and touch Bucky’s boot with his, but that’s not enough. And then he thinks, dammit, this is my Soulmate, we have each other’s Words. I can be near him.

So he goes and sits in the seat next to Bucky. And then he moves the armrest in between them up, and curls up against Bucky’s side.

Bucky moves in his sleep and Steve braces himself, because this is it, this is when Bucky wakes up and yells at him, but no, Bucky just loops out one of his arms, the one with Steve’s Words around the bicep, and pulls Steve in closer, mumbling happily to himself.

Steve falls asleep there, and doesn’t wake up until Tony announces they’re landing.

 

* * *

 

Bucky wakes up with his arms full of Steve. Much as he’d never admit it, it’s a pretty great way to wake up, drool mark on the shoulder of his tac jacket and everything. He’s also fairly sure that every Avenger on the Quinjet now has at least a dozen cellphone pics of them snuggling.

Three months ago he was a PTSD-riddled loser with a part-time job at a chain coffee store. Now he’s a super soldier and the Soulmate of Captain America. Life was a funny old thing.

Wait. What if… A sickening doubt began to bubble in Bucky’s stomach.

He pokes Steve a little, and watches him snuffle awake, ridiculous flaxen hair skee-whiff, and gorgeous full lips puffy with sleep. “Hey, Steve, I’m your Soulmate, right?”

Steve blinks at him. “Yeah, Buck. I’m stuck with you, unfortunately.” Then he snuggles back into Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky pets his hair and whispers in his ear. “Hey, when we get back to New York do you wanna go to the sex shop and buy something you can whip me with tonight? Because I think I’d really like it.”

Steve convulses, and hisses at him. “Jesus, Buck, you can’t just _say_ things like that.” Then he wriggles impossibly more into Bucky’s lap. “But fuck, yeah, I want to.”

Natasha looks up from her book. “Oh, have you two finally worked your shit out?”

“No,” Bucky grumbles. “I hate him.”

“I hate him more,” says Steve, and then he leans over and kisses Bucky, just as slow and dirty as he had the night before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret nothing.
> 
> Also, the Official Bucky Barnes Motivational Poster(tm):
> 
>  
> 
> I kinda have the urge to do a New Year’s epilogue where Sam comes back from sabbatical / vacation and discovers Steve’s relationship, because all the Avengers had individually decided that he had to see it for himself, with no warning
> 
> Or Peter Parker asking Mr Stark if he can meet Captain America because he’s always been such an inspiration to him and Tony’s like, uhh, maybe not this weekend, kiddo, his Soulmate’s got a three-day leave pass from SHIELD and frankly we’re all going to clear out until the cleaners leave on Tuesday....

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Jeez, I need to finish my other WIPs.
> 
> My brain: Lol here’s a hatefic, you should stay up all night and write it
> 
> (This is two chapters and all written. Next one will be up tomorrow. Think of it as counter-programming for all the lovey-dovey flufftastic Christmas fics.)
> 
> The Bronzino at the Met:  
> 
> 
> And hi, I’m [here on tumblr](https://alexdecampi.tumblr.com). I also have other fics :)


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